People United Means Action

Even if they have to lie, slander, and mock this woman with sex jokes, crazy jokes, bimbo jokes, slut jokes, and bad mother jokes every day for the next 3 and a half years, the BOIZ in our SCFP will do it. After all, it’s their JOB.

Violet Sox is excellent on the FOUR LESSONS women must learn from the Vanity Fair hit job on Sarah Palin. After making his sexist contempt for Palin’s very existence crystal clear(how DARE she be the KEYNOTE speaker at a local event in Evanston, Illinois? Who does she think she is, upstaging Michael Steele like that?), Todd Purdum asks this question, which gives his whole show away:

“What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life?”

Is he fucking serious? Is Todd Purdum unaware of who the occupant of the White House is? Is he unaware of the (lacking) record of achievement of the previous occupant of the White House? Is Purdum unaware of the (lacking) record of MOST OF THE FREAKING members of Congress and half of the presidential candidates (Fred Thompson anyone?) last year?

Is he NOT AWARE that that question, which on the face of it seems like an interesting and important one to ponder, has already been answered beyond a shadow of a doubt? The walking, talking teleprompting answer to Purdum’s asinine and ridiculous question (Palin has an inarguable record of achievement in public life, you jackass) IS SITTING IN THE OVAL OFFICE RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE! What does THAT say Toddy-boy? That the American electorate is made up of a bunch of blithering idiots? Well, we already knew that after the 2004 re-election of W. You’re several years too late with this story Todd. But kicking public women in the teeth is a habit “journalists” just can’t seem to beat. Apparently it sells magazines.

Purdum squandered any willingness I might have had to read his article with an open mind with his continuous references to “sexiest” and “beauty queen” and “Naughty Monkey Double Dare pumps,” and “fertile” in his opening paragraphs, as well as his attempt to make Palin’s utterly mundane skill at posing for cameras look not only venal but also menacingly phony — Beauty Queen! ALL seasoned politicians are good at entering a room full of cameras and casually posing as they walk, Todd. From unlovely people like Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank to good looking ones like Bill Clinton and Jennifer Granholm. D’uh. But you know that Todd. You’re just rewriting reality to make it suit your political agenda. And that political agenda, one you share with everyone from Rachel Maddow to Frank Rich (and David Letterman and Jane Hamsher and on and on) is to KILL SARAH PALIN DEAD before the midterm elections.

Violet’s lessons are 100% correct and indispensable, but I urge you to remember this one fact: Rahm Emmanuel and his minions in the Obama Movement are trying to KILL SARAH PALIN DEAD before she can build up enough power to run against obama in 2012. Hold that fact in the front of your mind and everything you read in the SCFP and the Blogger BOIZ, or see on the mainstream media will suddenly be clear for what it is: a concerted effort to take her down.

Now, why should you care? That’s politics and it’s how winners win, right? And isn’t Sarah Palin a forced-pregnancy Republian? Yup. and yup. EXCEPT for a couple problems:

1. The press should be free. A simple statement, naive if you will, but true nonetheless. The political efforts of the White House shouldn’t be being coordinated with help from the press — No matter which Party is in power.
2. Even more importantly: the Obama Movement is going to take Sarah Palin down using the most sexist and misogynistic weapons they can. They can’t get her on ethics (as far as we know); they can’t  get her on flip-flopping or inconsistency; they can’t get her on charisma (though they can and do use Snob Appeal effectively, CONSTANTLY reminding us of how trashy she is); and getting her on politics isn’t all that effective since, minus her forced-pregnancy views (which aren’t all THAT radical methinks), Palin’s political views are fairly reasonable: She’s a good-government, small government, responsive government champion. And after the past eight and a half years, continuing into today with news breaking every ten minutes about corruption, compromise, and double-dealing in the Democratic Party, lord knows the people are ACHING for a champion like her.

So the BOIZ are going to have to do what they have to do to bring Sarah Palin down: Use their dildos.

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UPDATE: Femisex has asked Puma readers to help with a response to “Elizabeth” a young woman in NYC who wants advice and also wants older women to start reaching out to teenagers and young women to help them combat the bombardment of sexually and sexist degrading cultural expectations they face. Please visit THIS LINK and comment if you can. And invite Elizabeth to join Puma PAC– she can be our Youth Outreach Coordinator!

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CAP AND TRADE WILL BE THE BUBBLE OBAMA USES TO INFLATE THE ECONOMY? CLICK ON THE FROG TO FIND OUT HOW.

A beautiful blog post by Afrocity Brown to start the day:

“I won’t feel sorry for Sarah Palin. She does not need this from me or any woman. We have all been Sarah at sometime in our life. Peer pressure, enemies and bullies are an awful fact of life. Catty behavior, nasty rumors spoken in high school locker rooms coupled with snickers as one walks to study hall. We have all had to deal with it, the heart breaking pet names: slutty Suzy, Betty Blo me, Sasha the Hut, Pizza face Pete.

In high school, I was quiet but expressed my individuality by wearing outlandish thrift store clothing. When you were as poor as I was being creative was the only way to go. Inspired by Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”  video, I wore big lace fluorescent day glow bows in my hair and mini skirts

My hair was often nappy and a big bush, no thanks to mom I wore cheap green “Wet n’ Wild” 99 cent eyeshadow and red orange lipstick which made me the subject of one of the most awful lunchroom verbal gang bangs in teenage history. . .”

Read more to find out what happened. Afrocity Brown is a conservative Puma — yup, there really are some — and she’s been blogging about Hillary Clinton, the Democratic primaries, and politics in general for more than a year now. Anyone who reads regularly in the Pumasphere will recognize her for her wit and sharp insights, especially on issues of misogyny and sexism. The collection of Palin “art” at her site is enough to break your heart.

Afrocity reminds me a bit of another Pumasphere favorite of mine, Dakinikat, who sometimes gets made fun of in the lunch room. Dak is definitely a liberal of the Democratic variety, as she says so herself, but she’s also an economist and is trained to analyze and understand data with an open and dispassionate mind (though, she IS a New Orleansian so don’t think that means she lacks passion!). Her willingness to ruffle a few feathers of conventional wisdom and pinch a sacred goat here or there has made her a target of blogstalkers and Puma Haters everywhere. And damn it I am SICK to DEATH of that.

Speaking of which, Riverdaughter is right and Avedon is dead wrong. We’ve been blogging about the Matt Taibbi Cap-and-Trade/Bubble article since the day it hit the internets.

Jackasses.

Yes, it is STILL raining in Massachusetts. The weather forecasts on my iphone, showing sunny skies and summer temps in pretty much EVERY SINGLE state in the union except ours and Maine is also burning my oatmeal.

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Seems like a trending topic today. Hal Turner, right-wing blogger and internet radio host, was arrested for inciting violence against three judges by publishing their personal information on his blog and writing they “deserve to be killed.” Holy smokes. Some may have debated whether jackasses like Bill O’Reilly and Ralph Reed were partially responsible for the murder of Dr. Tiller (Not me. I think it’s patently obvious that O’Reilly and Reed have blood on their hands.) But no one can defend Turner’s inciteful rhetoric.

On the other hand, did those who condemned O’Reilly after Tiller’s murder also scream bloody murder when a mainstream magazine (Sorry if it offends you (it offends me too), but Playboy IS a mainstream magazine.) publishes an article calling for the rape of conservative women, or when Sandra Bernhardt threatens Sarah Palin with a racist promise that she’ll be gang-raped by “black brothers” if she visits New York City?

Anyway, the hypocrisy of the so-called Left notwithstanding, this is pretty bad:

“Once an aspiring politician, Mr. Turner has become a controversial blogger and Internet radio host who has attracted attention from civil rights monitoring groups for his anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic pronouncements, and from authorities in Connecticut, where he was charged earlier this month with inciting violence against state lawmakers.”

(h/t danceswithpumas)

But speaking of bloggers who are only bad in the good sense of the word, Cinie is in fine fettle today:

“I mean, I believe in giving credit where credit is due, so, I have no problem unequivocally declaring Baracko Bama, King of Jabberwockilicious Doublespeak.  Take, for example, this doozy of an example of talking loud and saying nothing.  At yesterday’s stage-managed Kiss Up to the Pissed Off Gay Community Meeting on the Downlow, which may, or may not have been exclusively attended by real LGBT activists, since an unspecified number of them were flown in from Chicago, and they were all ushered in and out through the back door, the Spokemodel-In-Chief had this to say:

“I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration,” the president said.

Oh, be still my heart.”

In Crap and Tax news, Puma.SF directs us to this news that Friends of the Earth is opposed to the Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade bill on the environmental (or lack thereof) merits.

If you missed yesterday’s PROWL, catch up HERE, or do it again! Our Senators worry about us if we don’t check in every day!

And if you missed this absolute must read by Matt Taibbi on Goldman Sachs and their involvement in the latest Cap and Trade swindle, read the whole thing HERE. Here’s a snippet:

“BUBBLE #6 – GLOBAL WARMING
Fast-Forward to today. It’s early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs – its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign – sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.

AS ENVISIONED BY GOLDMAN, THE FIGHT TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING WILL BECOME A “CARBON MARKET” WORTH $1 TRILLION A YEAR.

Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. (Gensler was the firm’s co-head of finance) And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits – a booming trillion-dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an “environmental plan,” called cap-and-trade.

The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that’s been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won’t even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.

Here’s how it works: If the bill passes; there will be limits for coal plants, utilities, natural-gas distributors and numerous other industries on the amount of carbon emissions (a.k.a. greenhouse gases) they can produce per year. If the companies go over their allotment, they will be able to buy “allocations” or credits from other companies that have managed to produce fewer emissions. President Obama conservatively estimates that about $646 billions worth of carbon credits will be auctioned in the first seven years; one of his top economic aides speculates that the real number might be twice or even three times that amount.

The feature of this plan that has special appeal to speculators is that the “cap” on carbon will be continually lowered by the government, which means that carbon credits will become more and more scarce with each passing year. Which means that this is a brand-new commodities market where the main commodity to be traded is guaranteed to rise in price over time. The volume of this new market will be upwards of a trillion dollars annually; for comparison’s sake, the annual combined revenues of an electricity suppliers in the U.S. total $320 billion.

Goldman wants this bill. The plan is (1) to get in on the ground floor of paradigm-shifting legislation, (2) make sure that they’re the profit-making slice of that paradigm and (3) make sure the slice is a big slice. Goldman started pushing hard for cap-and-trade long ago, but things really ramped up last year when the firm spent $3.5 million to lobby climate issues. (One of their lobbyists at the time was none other than Patterson, now Treasury chief of staff.)”

DO read the whole thing. But be sure you have plenty of THIS on hand for when you’re done. Oh, and Matt Taibbi is a bona-fide, card-carrying Liberal. His bestselling book, The Great Derangement, had entire chapters on the insanity of the far-right religious maniacs who form the base of the Republican Party in many parts of the country. His scorn for politics runs in every direction, however, and there are no sacred donkeys in his cosmology. Just like in ours.

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Mockery and Rant: I think they may be the mainstays of blogging (someone should start a blog with that title. It’s available), and as valuable as they are, both are so often and so predictably abused. Mockery is certainly a powerful and effective tool for those with less power and influence to use against those with more. It’s free and can be wielded alone, even on a lonely little blog. And rant has its uses too. It can be funny, cathartic, and use hyperbole to set bright lines delimiting the broadest area of common ground shared by a diverse group. We may disagree on many minor and major individual points, but we ALL agree David Letterman’s “jokes” were offensive, or that Prop Hate is a despicable piece of legislation.

Short rants also have their purpose. Contemplating the vast miasmic swamp that is the Islamic political and cultural treatment of women is enough to dismay even the staunchest political feminist from even attempting to understand, analyze, or criticize it. How does one work with THIS? In trying to, one gets swallowed up in THIS. Much easier to just cut to the quick (Islam sucks!), knowing (YES, I know there are good, brave, honorable, freedom-loving, feminist muslims. YES, I know there is much to criticize in all religions. YES, I know there is beautiful thought and philosophy in the Koran (actually, I don’t know it; but I’ll happily take your word for it.), so yes I know it is a simplification and and a one-sided machete with which to fight. So be it.

Islam sucks.

So, yes of course bloggers need to depend on mockery and rant to be heard and to influence or participate in the national discussion, but it’s SO easy for us to accidentally, or stupidly, start shooting at each other.

Molly Ivins was right about satire:
“Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel — it’s vulgar.”

I’m with Steven Mather 100% on this. Make arguments using evidence and clearly state your opinions. Don’t call people names, either implicitly or explicitly, ESPECIALLY when you’re arguing with allies.

I guess it pumps up readership to engage in flame wars or whatever, but isn’t it kind of boring at the end of the day?

And the story in Honduras is IMPORTANT! Way too important to allow baseless ad hominem attacks to distract us from the story. We know the powers that be will use confusion and radio silence to keep us guessing and unsure. Anyone who pretends to know what the FACTS are in Honduras is most likely lying.

Did the U.S. train the military personnel who ousted President Zelaya?
If so, why is the obama administration condemning the coup? IS this a radical shift from the policies of the Bush era?

And oh my goodness, how’s this for rich irony? Left-wing know-it-alls at Daily Kos are now objecting to the replaced president, Roberto Micheleti, on the grounds that he is NOT A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN of Honduras. Seems, there’s a leetle bit of trouble with the new guy’s birth certificate:

“In other words, this coup was carried out by a graduate of a sinister U.S.-backed terrorist training school, for the purpose of overthrowing a legally elected president, who has been replaced by a man who may be constitutionally forbidden from ever holding the office of president. All international bodies and agencies, and every nation in the world that claims to support the concept of democracy, has every valid reason to stand firm against this coup. It’s important that they know it, that the coup leaders know that they know it, and that everyone knows that the world will not allow it.” 

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! (Kos later corrected the misinformation about Micheleti’s birth certificate. I’m sure the wingers over there are prepared to admit they are BLATANT racists for believing that anyone with such a “funny sounding name” like Michelleti in Honduras is obviously not a citizen. But they didn’t change the original article, nor do they acknowledge the entire piece loses a fundamental basis for being published AT ALL once the inconvenient “update” is taken into account. Will the writers at the all-powerful Kos now allow some nuance to enliven and widen their arguments about the coup? Don’t hold your breath Pumas.)

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As theamericanway said in comments. You might as well turn it off and get ALL your news from the internet. Seriously. Pretend it broke or something. Break it yourself so you won’t be tempted. Most of us have a TV addiction, that is, we turn it on out of HABIT, not because we expect to feel better after watching or in order to be truly entertained. Trust me. I speak from long years of experience and habit. Don’t be afraid — once you’ve pulled the plug, you’ll be able to find EVERYTHING you want and need on the internet: from comedy to breaking news to video games. Heh, that would be a good idea for a reality show: “Pulling the Plug,” in which my character, kind of like Cesar Millan, goes and lives with a family, forcing them to give up their TV addiction and spend their time more enjoyably and productively. It could be a huge TV hit!

But it’s true — TV is AWFUL, and it makes you feel bad. For example, I feel sort of shocked and sad that Michael Jackson died. It’s brought up memories of the 80’s and when I was young. I remember watching him get weirder as I got more mature and responsible. My memories of Farrah Fawcett are even fonder — waiting up to watch the show with my sister (getting to stay up past our 7:30pm bedtime!) and playing Charlie’s Angels with our friends at the beach (I always wanted to be Sabrina). Anyways, they’re both dead — it’s kind of sad. But from what I hear over at Violet Sox’s place, watching television would make you believe that Michael Jackson’s death marks a new epoch in human history (did we even HAVE human history before Michael? CNN wants to know.) Violet’s two latest posts on the subject make me happy — by not turning on the TV I’ve kept my fond memories of MJ and Fawcett safe. If I had been inundated with non-stop wall-to-wall coverage of the events, I think I would end up HATING the two of them for being famous enough to make the US media self-implode on a stupendous excess of phony smarm.

Meanwhile, over on the internet, Violet Sox is disarmingly and quietly profound:

“I’m reminded of when John F. Kennedy, Jr. (John-John) and his wife died in that plane crash. In short order there appeared at my local supermarket a glossy sort of magazine-cum-book, with big photos of the dead couple and bathetic remembrances of them.

I asked my boyfriend-at-the-time, “why do people buy things like that?”

“To feel sad,” he said.

There isn’t enough already to feel sad about? I thought.

I’m also reminded of the missionaries who accompanied the Spanish conquistadors to the New World. They tried to tell the indigenous people about The One who had suffered and died and then risen from the grave. “Do you know this man?” the Indians would ask, puzzled.

No, the missionaries should have said, but we like to imagine we do.”

**** TODAY’S PROWL ****

Contact your SENATORS. Tell them NO WAY on Cap and Trade.
Click HERE to reach your senators’ offices and use a the letter below to send:

Dear Senator,

I am your constituent and a member of Puma P.A.C. (http://pumapac.org). I am urging you to VOTE NO on the Cap and Trade bill, a version of which was passed by the House last week.

I fully support efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, lessen our dependence on foreign oil, and heal our environment, BUT 

this bill is little more than a government handout to Wall Street insiders to make a fortune in a new, bubble-prone financial market.

Consumers and taxpayers will PAY in order for those we already KNOW are untrustworthy to make millions, if not billions of dollars. And there is very little scientific evidence this bill will even reduce emissions at all.

The American people are paying attention and we DO NOT SUPPORT THIS CAP AND TRADE BILL.

The Sunlight Foundation and the Sierra Club are both very displeased with the way the Congress and the White House RUSHED this bill through, with no chance for members or citizens to read and understand it.

Additionally, Greenpeace and other environmental protection groups are actively opposed to the bill on its merits.

Please VOTE “NO” THE CAP AND TRADE BILL!

Sincerely,
Your Name
Puma PAC Member (www.pumapac.org)

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Gorgeous picture by danceswithpumas from the SoCal Puma Meetup this weekend:

Good reading on the Cap and Trade bill passed by the House last week HERE, by Matt Taibbi.

THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE

From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression – and they’re about to do it again

By MATT TAIBBI

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush’s last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton’s former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup – which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There’s John Thain, the rear end in a top hat chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain’s sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There’s Joshua Bolten, Bush’s chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York – which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman – not to mention …

Do read the whole thing. It’s great background for the PROWLs we’ll be doing this week to try to stop this bill in the Senate. Riverdaughter’s reaction to the Taibbi piece is excellent; and Miq’s Failbot takedown will pick up your spirits.

If you missed Cinie on Michael Jackson, catch up HERE;

Something AMAZING at Uppity Woman;

Catsden is in FINE FORM in her critique of the administration’s abandonment of smaller banks;

And PatriotDEMS takes the Farrah Fawcett Feminism question deeper HERE.

Oh, and Twisty is really good on the New Abolitionists.

Happy Sunday!

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Got caught up reading from this compendium of the 100 Best American Speeches. The editors rank two of Barbara Jordan’s speeches in the top 20, and give Hillary Clinton’s “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights” 1995 speech in Beijing the number 33 slot. Roosevelt’s addresss to Congress on December 8, 1941 is remarkable for the ominousness of its plain, unardoned style:

“As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God.”

What strikes me, reading everything from General MacArthur to Anna Howard Shaw is how high the standards were for the listeners. Speeches today are nothing more than cliches and market-tested comfort thoughts strung together. The rhetoric of Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X required us to actively listen and concentrate. Great speeches have something NEW to say. Read around at the site and weep at how low the bar is for speechwriters today and why it was so easy for a 4th rate mind like Groper Favreau to clear it. It is a particularly cruel cosmic JOKE that commentators claim WITH A STRAIGHT FACE that Groper Favreau’s “Yes We Can” tagline is a mark of his impressive talents. Oy vey.

Bemindful at the Widdershins brought my attention to this essay by Bill Clinton, published yesterday in Time Magazine. 

“My grandfather was a dirt farmer with only a sixth-grade education. During the Depression, he eked out a living selling blocks of ice. But in those days, even though he was poor, he knew someone special: from listening to the fireside chats on the radio, he knew Franklin Roosevelt. And he believed that Roosevelt knew what his life was like — and cared about it too.

I grew up listening to my grandfather’s tales of what it was like to live through the Depression and the war and what Roosevelt meant to him. When I was President, in another time of change and uncertainty, I often looked at the portrait of F.D.R. in the Roosevelt Room and remembered my grandfather’s stories.

Besides having a deep personal connection to ordinary citizens, Roosevelt got the big things right. When he came into office during the Depression, he saw that the ills of the country could not be addressed without more aggressive involvement by the government. He ran for President as a fiscal conservative, promising to balance the budget. But unlike his predecessor, he quickly realized that, with prices collapsing and unemployment exploding, only the Federal Government could step into the breach and restart the economy.”

For an Open Thread on this gloriously sunny and warm Saturday, be inspired and entertained by this classic from the Texan gem, Dorothy Ann Wilis Richards:

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, very much.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Buenas noches, mis amigos.

I’m delighted to be here with you this evening, because after listening to George Bush all these years, I figured you needed to know what a real Texas accent sounds like.

Twelve years ago Barbara Jordan, another Texas woman, Barbara made the keynote address to this convention, and two women in a hundred and sixty years is about par for the course.

But if you give us a chance, we can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.

I want to announce to this Nation that in a little more than 100 days, the Reagan -Meese – Deaver – Nofziger – Poindexter – North – Weinberger – Watt – Gorsuch -Lavelle – Stockman – Haig – Bork – Noriega – George Bush [era] will be over!

You know, tonight I feel a little like I did when I played basketball in the 8th grade. I thought I looked real cute in my uniform. And then I heard a boy yell from the bleachers, “Make that basket, bird legs.” And my greatest fear is that same guy is somewhere out there in the audience tonight, and he’s going to cut me down to size, because where I grew up there really wasn’t much tolerance for self-importance, people who put on airs.

I was born during the Depression in a little community just outside Waco, and I grew up listening to Franklin Roosevelt on the radio.  Well, it was back then that I came to understand the small truths and the hardships that bind neighbors together. Those were real people with real problems and they had real dreams about getting out of the Depression.  I can remember summer nights when we’d put down what we called the Baptist pallet, and we listened to the grown-ups talk.  I can still hear the sound of the dominoes clicking on the marble slab my daddy had found for a tabletop.  I can still hear the laughter of the men telling jokes you weren’t supposed to hear — talkin’ about how big that old buck deer was, laughin’ about mama puttin’ Clorox in the well when the frog fell in.

They talked about war and Washington and what this country needed. They talked straight talk. And it came from people who were living their lives as best they could. And that’s what we’re gonna do tonight. We’re gonna tell how the cow ate the cabbage.

I got a letter last week from a young mother in Lorena, Texas, and I wanna read part of it to you. She writes,

“Our worries go from pay day to pay day, just like millions of others. And we have two fairly decent incomes, but I worry how I’m going to pay the rising car insurance and food. I pray my kids don’t have a growth spurt from August to December, so I don’t have to buy new jeans. We buy clothes at the budget stores and we have them fray and fade and stretch in the first wash. We ponder and try to figure out how we’re gonna pay for college and braces and tennis shoes. We don’t take vacations and we don’t go out to eat. Please don’t think me ungrateful. We have jobs and a nice place to live, and we’re healthy. We’re the people you see every day in the grocery stores, and we obey the laws. We pay our taxes. We fly our flags on holidays and we plod along trying to make it better for ourselves and our children and our parents. We aren’t vocal any more. I think maybe we’re too tired. I believe that people like us are forgotten in America.”

Well of course you believe you’re forgotten, because you have been.

This Republican Administration treats us as if we were pieces of a puzzle that can’t fit together. They’ve tried to put us into compartments and separate us from each other. Their political theory is “divide and conquer.” They’ve suggested time and time again that what is of interest to one group of Americans is not of interest to any one else. We’ve been isolated. We’ve been lumped into that sad phraseology called “special interests.” They’ve told farmers that they were selfish, that they would drive up food prices if they asked the government to intervene on behalf of the family farm, and we watched farms go on the auction block while we bought food from foreign countries. Well, that’s wrong!

They told working mothers it’s all their fault — their families are falling apart because they had to go to work to keep their kids in jeans and tennis shoes and college. And they’re wrong!! They told American labor they were trying to ruin free enterprise by asking for 60 days’ notice of plant closings, and that’s wrong. And they told the auto industry and the steel industry and the timber industry and the oil industry, companies being threatened by foreign products flooding this country, that you’re “protectionist” if you think the government should enforce our trade laws. And that is wrong. When they belittle us for demanding clean air and clean water for trying to save the oceans and the ozone layer, that’s wrong.

No wonder we feel isolated and confused. We want answers and their answer is that “something is wrong with you.”  Well nothing’s wrong with you. Nothing’s wrong with you that you can’t fix in November!

We’ve been told — We’ve been told that the interests of the South and the Southwest are not the same interests as the North and the Northeast. They pit one group against the other. They’ve divided this country and in our isolation we think government isn’t gonna help us, and we’re alone in our feelings. We feel forgotten. Well, the fact is that we are not an isolated piece of their puzzle. We are one nation. We are the United States of America.

Now we Democrats believe that America is still the county of fair play, that we can come out of a small town or a poor neighborhood and have the same chance as anyone else; and it doesn’t matter whether we are black or Hispanic or disabled or a women [sic]. We believe that America is a country where small business owners must succeed, because they are the bedrock, backbone of our economy.

We believe that our kids deserve good daycare and public schools. We believe our kids deserve public schools where students can learn and teachers can teach. And we wanna believe that our parents will have a good retirement and that we will too. We Democrats believe that social security is a pact that can not be broken.

We wanna believe that we can live out our lives without the terrible fear that an illness is going to bankrupt us and our children.  We Democrats believe that America can overcome any problem, including the dreaded disease called AIDS.  We believe that America is still a country where there is more to life than just a constant struggle for money. And we believe that America must have leaders who show us that our struggles amount to something and contribute to something larger — leaders who want us to be all that we can be.

–snip–

I’m a grandmother now. And I have one nearly perfect granddaughter named Lily. And when I hold that grandbaby, I feel the continuity of life that unites us, that binds generation to generation, that ties us with each other. And sometimes I spread that Baptist pallet out on the floor, and Lily and I roll a ball back and forth. And I think of all the families like mine, like the one in Lorena, Texas, like the ones that nurture children all across America. And as I look at Lily, I know that it is within families that we learn both the need to respect individual human dignity and to work together for our common good.  Within our families, within our nation, it is the same.

And as I sit there, I wonder if she’ll ever grasp the changes I’ve seen in my life — if she’ll ever believe that there was a time when blacks could not drink from public water fountains, when Hispanic children were punished for speaking Spanish in the public schools, and women couldn’t vote.

I think of all the political fights I’ve fought, and all the compromises I’ve had to accept as part payment. And I think of all the small victories that have added up to national triumphs and all the things that would never have happened and all the people who would’ve been left behind if we had not reasoned and fought and won those battles together. And I will tell Lily that those triumphs were Democratic Party triumphs.

I want so much to tell Lily how far we’ve come, you and I. And as the ball rolls back and forth, I want to tell her how very lucky she is that for all our difference, we are still the greatest nation on this good earth. And our strength lies in the men and women who go to work every day, who struggle to balance their family and their jobs, and who should never, ever be forgotten.

I just hope that like her grandparents and her great-grandparents before that Lily goes on to raise her kids with the promise that echoes in homes all across America: that we can do better, and that’s what this election is all about.

Thank you very much.”

Ann Richards was the governor of Texas from 1991 to 1995. To bring her down, George W. Bush and Karl Rove called her everything from a bitch to a lesbian to a drunk. And the rest, as they say, was history.

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Yesterday’s shocking news of Michael Jackson’s death distracted me from mentioning Farrah Fawcett, the television and poster-girl legend, who also died yesterday. Fawcett’s death was not a surprise — she had been battling an aggressive recurrence of cancer — but it was still news, as she was one of the most well-known “sex objects” of the 1970’s. Obituaries and retrospectives all over the media have taken note of her struggle as an actress to overcome her huge early fame and be accepted as a serious actress, not just a pretty face. Fawcett’s harrowing and inspiring performance as a physically and emotionally abused wife in the movie “The Burning Bed” proved she really could act in serious and complex roles, but sadly, she never really repeated a performance of that caliber.

Looking at the images that pop up on the Google page I linked to above, I’m struck by how un-exploited Fawcett’s image was in the 1970’s. Sure, she’s in a bathing suit, and in somewhat provocative poses in some of the pictures, but honestly, there really is more “California Sunshine Girl” in those pictures than the HOT HOT DIRTY SEX poses and representations of everyone from Christina Aguilera to the Pussycat Dolls — from Miley Cyrus to Angeina Jolie — we are inundated with today. In the picture above, for which she is world famous, Fawcett is wearing a one-piece (!) bathing suit that sags somewhat around her belly and is cut lower around the thighs than your average 10 year old’s bathing suit today. Her breasts are unnaturally (yes, that’s a joke) small and unexposed. The most risque thing about the picture is that her nipples are visible poking the thin fabric of her bathing suit — an “au naturel” touch which would surely be photoshopped out today on the grounds of being too ickily real.

How weird that THE iconic image of the 1970’s would be WAAY too “ugly” and psychologically ambiguous to make the cut as a Facebook profile picture for your average middle school girl today, never MIND making it into a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. We are so fully immersed in a culture in which your average 13 year old is expert enough at the “F**k me like a porn star” pose to be able to publish dozens of such self-exploitative pictures of herself on her own Facebook page without the slightest understanding of her own participation in self-exploitation, AND the supposed grown-ups like us — the ones who OWNED that damn poster and looked at in our walls every night in bed — have also forgotten what an image of self-owned feminine beauty even looks like anymore.

What Fawcett exudes in that picture, aside from her million megawatt and seemingly sincerely FRIENDLY smile and her glowing youth and beauty, is exuberant confidence and freedom. Yes, of COURSE the picture gave the boys and young men of the 1970’s a sexual thrill they’ll never forget, but it meant quite a lot to girls and young women too.

Don’t forget, Charlie’s Angels was a television hit with several explicitly FEMINIST messages. Jill, Kate, and Sabrina were smokin’ hot badasses and, as far as I recall, they spent ZERO time agonizing over their love lives, marriage opportunities, or biological clocks (yes, i LOATHE “Sex in the City.” Sorry Third Wavers). Charlie’s Angels was of a thematic piece with The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and One Day At a Time, even Three’s Company (DAMN! There was a LOT of feminism on TV in the 1970’s). Then along came the Dukes of Hazard, Dallas, Phyllis Schafly, Ronald Reagan, and the pornification of American girlhood.

Drew Barrymore, one of the most successful, talented, and powerful young women in Hollywood today did not choose to remake Angels into a mega-hit of her own because she wanted to vent her inner porn-star dreams. Where oh where are the feminist television writers of today?? I lament the dawning realization that at the age of 40 I am the youngest woman old enough to be a political feminist anymore — if you get my meaning. Any woman younger than me would have had to have worked really really diligently to wade through the Swamp Misogyny of the explosive pop culture of the the late 80’s to today and emerge undegraded and unbrainwashed. I was lucky enough to come of age during the golden age of television femnism. So sad.

Lynette Long so eloquently articulated, in an excerpt quoted by Violet Sox on her blog the other day, with regard to the importance to feminism of Sarah Palin as a representational role model, regardless of her importance or lack thereof as a feminist political activist (which reminds me — when was the last time you heard Michelle Obama or Nancy Pelosi refer to herself as a proud or committed feminist? ‘Cause Sarah Palin OFTEN refers to herself as a feminist committed to women’s equal rights. Weird, huh? But I digress.) — children NEED people in heroic roles on which to model themselves. Posters on walls of sports, music, television/movie and political heroes are NOT mere decorations. They are the manifestation of the ACTUAL dreams of children — dreams they are dreaming FOR themselves and BY themselves; their first articulation of an idea of themselves as unique and potentially GREAT adults.  A beautiful thought in itself.

Recently my eight year old and her good friend wanted to play “Businessman” — a game they devised involving job interviews, bossing employees around, designing products to sell, and making MONEY!! I was aghast when they asked me for some names of famous “businessmen” so they could give themselves characters to play. “Why not play Businesswoman!??!” I practically shrieked. Their eyes widened and they said, “Huh? Okay! We didn’t know there WERE any businesswomen!” (I am NOT making this up.) Who should they “be” they asked me. Honestly, it took me a while to come up with any semi-famous or inspirational names for them. Since economic turmoil was all over the news at the time I came up with Elizabeth Warren and Sheila Bair — women whom I was able to honestly describe as REALLY important and powerful. They LOVED it — seriously, they were PSYCHED. They still often play the Sheila and Elizabeth game and I find made up business cards and resumes for Sheila “Bear” and Elizabeth Warrin around the house all the time. As you know, Sheila Bair is a Republican and Elizabeth Warren is not exactly the most exciting character in the world — but of course Skipper and her pal could not care less about that and wouldn’t know what I was talking about if I tried to explain.

Lord, we have a lot of work to UNdo the damage to women’s freedom and power by the pornification of feminism in the past twenty years. The death of the beautifully powerful Farrah Fawcett, and my surprising realization of her role as a feminist icon, is a sad reminder of how far back we’ve fallen. 

But Fawcett’s beautiful freedom, as captured in that unforgettable image, can also be an inspirational reminder of WHY the work is worth it.

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I’m 40 years old, which means I was in the eighth grade when Michael Jackson’s legendary album “Thriller“ was released in 1982. Being a city kid in an ethnic neighborhood that prided itself on the toughness of its natives, the mantra “disco sucks” was repeated dead seriously: actual street fights often occurred between kids from parishes fiercely loyal to WCOZ, the rock station, and those from parishes obsessed with the Disco dancing craze and the new station WXKS (KISS 108!). Donna Summer, Disco’s undisputed Queen, was born and raised in my neighborhood, but on the disco side of the tracks. I listened to WCOZ. 

So I never appreciated Michael Jackson until I was pretty much grown up. He had already changed into a reclusive and obviously deeply odd person by the time I realized how phenomenally talented he was as a dancer and singer. Watching Michael Jackson dance is like watching Wayne Gretzky play hockey, only better.

Most of my family and friends weren’t particular fans of the King of Pop — some actively loathed the guy because of their immersion in the punk and alternative rock scenes of the 80’s and 90’s, but no one denies his status as a superstar. So I’m wondering, if you are between 35 and 55 years old, do you agree with me that Michael Jackson was the first truly legendary personality of our generation? Our Elizabeth Taylor/Marilyn Monroe/Elvis Presley/Howard Hughes/The Beatles? Is that why even people who never cared for the guy’s music are, like the rest of the world, stunned by his death?

Being famous from early childhood means you can be forever young in the hearts and minds of your audience. Like Shirley Temple. But while Little Miss Lollipop was unnervingly composed and magnetically mature as a child, Michael Jackson, as a child at least, was a vulnerable and sincere little angel. Watching him sing “Ben” and knowing how weird and troubled his path would turn out to be would break anyone’s heart.

The man could DANCE. Holy smokes.

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